Rev. James Allston (sp?) was just on the stage at the Democratic Convention to give props to Kerry, who he served under on a swift boat in Vietnam. At one point during the speech, I swear he started to “hut.” In fact, I think he just barely kept from it.
For those who don’t know, “hutting” is a practice of preachers mostly in the black church tradition that involves adding the syllable “hut” between phrases. (As in, “the word of god-hut.”) I had a youth director once who would hut whenever he preached in the evening service—so the adults in the congregation would know to take him seriously.
Which is to say that the sermon doesn’t really start until the hutting begins. For a black preacher to have to keep himself from hutting when talking up his old commanding officer (from some thirty-plus years ago) says one hell of a lot. This recovering fundamentalist took notice.
Too funny. There’s even a graphic to boot.
According to RatcliffeBlog, the investigation into 9/11 cost a mere $15 million. That’s a savings of $65 million over the Clinton investigations! Given the relative importance of the two, though, I’m not terribly surprised.
I’ve long told my friend Chutney that it takes a seminary graduate to be a true vulgarian. Too true. So it is with some fanfare that I unveil the newest and best vulgarities the internet has to offer.
(Those of fair temperament should at this point go watch The Fox and the Hound.) Click to continue reading “Vulgarities in search of context”
This site is now something like a year and a half old. As I look through the “irony” category, I notice there have been few postings there for a while now. So maybe it’s time to say something about why this site is named “MyIrony.”
The inspiration for MyIrony comes from the young World War I era intellectual Randolph Bourne. A Bourne quote runs along the bottom of the left sidebar, and you can read a few more quotes here in one of my first posts. Different from cosmic or literary irony, Bourne’s “lifestyle irony” seems to fall out like this:
- It is an alert mindfulness to lived contradictions
- It is personally disruptive and rarely peaceful.
- It assiduously avoids religious/spiritual complacency.
- It is life-giving and resilient.
Then there’s contemporary philosopher Richard Rorty, who urges we practice “private irony” within the bounds of a commitment to democratic ideals. For Rorty the private ironist is always aware that her “final vocabulary” (sacred story, meta-narrative, etc.) is not really final but a good hunch. She remains open to better stories and actively seeks them out, whether in literature or religion.
That’s all well and good, and I’m pretty much in agreement with both Bourne and Rorty. But I’d like to go further still. What do I mean by “irony?” Click to continue reading “Back to irony”
